1) Bring Nature into the Office

“American workers spend approximately 90 percent of their waking hours indoors, many of them at computer workstations far away from the closest window…” - Eric Ridic, Creative Director, MKDA

With so much of our time spent inside, it’s important to take steps to help employees feel connected to the outside world.

One way to achieve this is to embrace the growing trend towards ‘Biophilic Design’: designing new builds and renovation projects to seamlessly incorporate the natural world in a sustainable, beneficial way, and bring outside space ‘in’ to the office. However, if you’re not looking to completely renovate your office space, there are low cost ways to bring nature into the work environment.

Natural light has a hugely positive effect on health and wellness, boosting activity levels, sleep quality, and sleep duration. As a result, it’s a great idea to rearrange your office space to try and capitalize on natural light from windows and doorways – moving light-blocking office cubicles, switching opaque dividers for glass panels, and repositioning any obstructive furniture.

Potted plants offer another way to bring nature into the office. Leafy green plants in particular can work wonders for indoor air quality, reduce noise levels (in a similar way to textiles), and generally boost the look and feel of your workplace.

2) Try out Textiles

Textile products, like mats and cushions, offer an affordable and effective way to change the feel of your space – creating a relaxed, ‘dressed-down’ look while adding an extra layer of comfort to seating areas and breakout spaces.

As well as changing the look and feel of your workplace, textiles are extremely sound absorbent, and can work wonders for noise reduction. This can be particularly valuable in parts of your workplace with an abundance of hard surfaces (like kitchens or lobbies) that might otherwise be difficult to keep quiet.

3) Change-up Your Color Scheme

Redesigning your workplace doesn’t need to be complicated. Often, a simple coat of paint can transform the environment, and completely reinvent the feel of a space. However, whether you’re repainting the entire office or redecorating a feature wall, there are a couple of factors to take into consideration:

It’s important for any new colors to stay consistent with the branding used throughout the rest of the building.

Color psychology. Different colors can elicit different moods – painting a huge office wall in a deep shade of crimson can create a very different feeling to a light blue – so it’s important to consider the psychological impact colors will have on the people experiencing them every day.

4) Reinvent Your Flooring

Flooring is an often overlooked part of office design, but it has a huge impact: covering the entirety of your workplace, and offering a huge range of colors and designs to choose from. As a result, periodically changing your flooring design can work wonders for reinvigorating your office.

‘Changing your flooring’ may sound like a mammoth task, but it doesn’t have to be. There are a growing range of modular flooring options available, including some with adhesive-less installation options. Flooring tiles with this type of backing (like Milliken’s Tractionback) can be lifted and re-laid multiple times, without the need for removing and reapplying adhesive.

This opens up a world of quick and effective design possibilities: allowing you to relay your flooring in a new pattern, and even switch-out particular tiles with different colors and designs to completely change the look and feel of the space.

5) Invest in Ergonomic Furniture

There’s more to revitalizing a workplace than just changing its aesthetic. One of the most powerful changes you can make is also one of the simplest. By investing in ergonomic furniture, you’ll be able to transform your workplace, and change how employees and visitors alike interact with the environment.

For example, the combination of sit-to-stand desks and cushion-backed carpet will allow employees to work comfortably whether seated or standing, and encourage greater freedom of movement. As well as offering a range of health benefits, this can work wonders for encouraging collaboration between employees and changing the feel of the working environment.